


fetters of knotted silk

by ndnickerson



Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Genre: Alternate Ending, Bigamy, Desire, F/M, Power Imbalance, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 13:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1512020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Whitcross, Jane's strength fails, and she finds herself drawn to a strange light, hoping to find her salvation at the other side. Alternate ending to the novel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fetters of knotted silk

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written based on prompts from Porn Battle XV, but it's not porn. Romance, but not porn. If an epilogue follows, that most likely will be.

The girl moves toward the light, one hand outstretched; mud climbs the hem of her plain gown, and her pale face has been reddened by wind and the heat of her own choking shame. All Whitcross is silent, doors and shuttered windows closed against the lash and spatter of twilit rain. She drifts with eyes fixed on the soft glow in the distance, and all of her aches: her broken heart, her mortified brain, her painfully empty stomach. The spoiled porridge did little to appease and more to wound, and her guts cringe and cramp about it. The hunger fades at times until she can make herself believe it's almost gone, and then it chews at her ribs with razor-sharp teeth, urging her to beg and grovel where she has no hope.

And oh that is the worst of it. She hopes only to die. She hopes only to be free of this, that she will be allowed to sleep in the earth until her master joins her, unfettered from his mad wife in the embrace of death.

_How much pain?_ she thinks, swallowing in a quick convulsion against her parched dry throat, the rain bathing her flushed face like tears. _How much until I have paid my penance for loving him? There is but one answer—I shall always love him and so this misery is my only lot._

Her spirits are so low that she hopes, with a gasping sob, that the light portends her last moments, and when her aching knees give out, she has only the strength to grasp a single handful of grass, a whispered prayer on her lips that the light will find her and bear her home.

\--

For a moment, in the moment she opens her eyes again, she believes it has.

The world around her is white and warm, and the pain—the pain is gone. Her stomach is a little weak, but does not complain of hunger. She is out of the open air, but she feels it nearby, warm and fragrant and inviting. Her fingers and toes, chilled and damp when she had fallen, are warm and dry. Her skin is clean; the clammy sheen of sweat that clung to her neck and in the folds of all her flesh is gone.

She feels only gratitude and tempered happiness. Her soul has been drawn to God, and she is safe here, her love kept pure. Before she summons the strength to turn her head and look about her, she wonders what it will be like to meet her parents in this place, if Helen will know her—

"Mademoiselle?"

The voice is hushed and feminine. Jane feels the first ache when she tries to move her head, and discovers that she does not ache while she is perfectly still, but apparently she has not yet recovered from the exposure and despair she felt in Whitcross.

So she yet lives. The crushing despair she feels at the thought is only slightly tempered by the curiosity she feels at being indoors, at the origin of the white-robed woman with tender eyes who approaches her bedside. "Mademoiselle?" she murmurs again, and a hand gently chafes Jane's.

The girl's voice is so weak as to be silent when she first attempts to speak; a sip offered from the glass of water at her bedside improves her, and though she still feels weak, her spirits disappointed, she is still curious. When she asks in French where she is, she is a little unnerved that the nurse answers her in kind, but the response is of no help. The nurse only assures with a gentle smile that "monsieur" will arrive soon.

Monsieur. No. Her heart, still cracked and blasted to powdered shards, gives one wild beat before subsiding. Surely...

Surely her blessing cannot come with such damnation.

\--

"My sweet Jane."

A trembling comes over her at the sound of his voice, a voice she dared not hope to ever hear again.

She had thought herself free—but oh, never truly free. She knew even as her steps took her from Thornfield that she dared not gaze back, her flesh and flagging spirits too weak to endure another glance at what she abandoned, the hearth upon which she had sacrificed her own poor heart. She loved him with all of her, just as she loves him now, but when the light of her eyes bends upon him again she knows she will be lost.

She had thought herself free. She had spent all her energy, all her panicked strength, to free herself of the cage their love had made around her, and she is left with none now.

Her heartbeat rings in her like some portent, but the calm, icy voice of her conscience holds no sway, is rendered silent by her exhaustion. For how could it be right, to part from him as she did—to leave the man she loved so well, who had proclaimed his only happiness, his very life, was sustained and made whole by her own?

That fine tremor touches her parting lips as she turns her head, drawn by a will not her own, and her soul cries out in anguish. She cannot, she _cannot_ ; she wrenched herself free, cleaved her own heart in two, and that alone should have guaranteed her some tranquility. Peace, if never the joy she felt in his arms; the strength of her righteousness, frail as it was and is, if never the shelter of his love. The act destroyed her, and she is reborn now, just as surely as she was when she met her own gaze in the mirror, Bertha Mason's name still burning in her ears for that first time.

She sees desperation in his features, and when her heart constricts, it is with the sound of his name. He is afraid to smile or hope, but as they gaze at each other, she sees that strange fervent light in his eyes again, the fury and passion that had sparked in him as he waited for her to emerge from her room on their wedding-day.

"Mr. Rochester," she murmurs. "Where..."

He takes a step toward her. His bulk and the strength that quivers in him, clenching in his fists, lending a slow deliberation to his steps, provoke a thrill she cannot name and has not yet understood. He gazes at her fondly, his fierce eyes gleaming and brow furrowed. For the first time she wonders if the misery she felt in Whitcross was in some small part thanks to that sympathetic vibration between them, that string he claimed was knotted to join their ribs and knit their souls.

It burns in her with no conviction, flaming into darkness—that her misery was for naught, unredeemed, to repay it so. She is too glad to see him again, drowning in the pure unabated _need_ of his gaze. No one else in her entire life has ever needed her, has ever hung on her words or devoted themselves to her happiness, as he does.

He would lay the world at her feet, but the gift is stolen.

"Hush," he murmurs, drawing the chair of late occupied by the nurse to her bedside. His gaze strays from her only briefly; he brings a cautious hand up to stroke the lace spread near her own hand, not close enough to touch, but close enough for her to feel the heat he radiates. "Conserve your strength, my angel."

She feebly shakes her head, but her gaze is still locked to his face. With every second and every word, she knows it will be that much harder—but she cannot look away.

"When I knew you had gone, I did all I could to trace you," he says, his voice tender. "Jane, you must know—I could not, _cannot_ , bear the thought of you alone and friendless in this world. I was desperate to find you; I considered Madeira, but I knew you had no means to reach it. Then the coach driver you hired, unable to find you on his return circuit, brought the parcel you had left behind to Thornfield—and I set off, quick as I could to find you. It is done, just as I told you it would be. Adèle is at school; Thornfield is closed to all but those few who remain there, and we shall never return." He touches her hand for the first time, and she wants to pull away, but she can't. A flush rises in her cheeks at the passion and intensity in his eyes. "And here, light of my soul, you are my bride."

Jane draws a slow breath, tears rising in her eyes. She opens her mouth, but there are no words; all she feels is a keening. She believed herself lost; now she is certain. And yet.

"You shake your pale head at me," he murmurs. "Did you not feel the same anguish I did at our parting? Are you truly so indifferent to me now? Jane—"

His voice breaks; he takes her hand, clasping it to his chest, and she feels his heart beat beneath his shirt. "You are weak, still. My dearest one. When I saw you, pale unearthly creature, coming to me across the moor, skirt whipped in the wind—you seemed an embodiment of my own misery. When you left, you doomed me to walk this prison of life alone, Janet. You fell to the earth too quickly for me to catch you in my arms, but I swear that to my last breath I will be here to support you. We can be as we dreamed here, as you have long been—flesh of my flesh, balm to my aching heart."

Jane shakes her head, making a sole feeble attempt to pull her hand back, but the warmth of his flesh, the warmth of human companionship—the lack of it she felt has left her starved for it, and she makes no further attempt. "We _cannot_ ," she cries, keeping the tears from spilling over with no small difficulty, but her strength is spent, and it fails her. "As long as your wife lives—"

"My wife is _here_ ," he declares, that same fury rising in his eyes, gesturing toward her with a vehement motion. "I would defy judgement of any man; I would cry my case to God Himself—"

"But we _cannot_ ," she says, her voice calmer now. "Mr. Rochester..."

"Edward," he corrects her softly. "Say my name as you once did, as I know you still do in your heart of hearts. What good does it do you, to cut yourself off from what has given you the first and purest bliss you have ever known, and ever will? What virtue can ever be gained by this misery, Janet? I know that you love me. Down to every fiber in me, with all of my tortured soul. My only regret is that I caused you pain."

She pinches her lips together; she tells herself to look away, but she cannot. Her heart must be in her eyes, but she cannot help it now. She has never doubted her love; maybe her faith is broken and always will be, but her love cannot die so easily.

Slowly he releases her hand, and she draws it back to the bed beside her. "You must regain your strength," he says, and nods, as though convincing himself. "Tomorrow I will take you out to see the sea. The breeze off the water is quite refreshing. We may bathe in it, if we wish; no one lives nearby to witness it."

She does not respond, and it is her only rebellion, a small one at that. She still cannot look away from him, and she sees the signs of his passion as it rises.

"Janet—how could I have let you go? I cannot. Not if you feel the same misery I do. It _cannot_ be right, to endure such grief when we have means to end it.

"Rest, love. The nurse will be with you. Tomorrow—our life will begin."

The nurse stays with her, but Jane falls into an uneasy sleep, her heart beating like some caged animal against her ribs. She fled temptation, but she finds herself stuck fast again. When she left Thornfield, she had a bit of money in her purse; here, she has nothing. Her heart shrinks from the thought of enduring another miserable, humiliating experience like the one she went through in Whitcross—begging for a crust of bread or spoiled food, unable to provide for herself, thrown upon the mercy of merciless strangers. She is in his villa in France, at the Mediterranean; she is unfamiliar with the country and its customs, friendless and alone, save for him. She would be delighted at the new experience, were her soul not in such turmoil.

It is beyond her strength. She closes her eyes and tries to pray, but the words do not come; her heart is conflicted, and she cannot pray to be willingly parted from him, nor to wish any blessing on this situation. She cannot be his wife when he is joined to another. She cannot love him.

She cannot love him, and yet she does. She must part from him forever, but having broken her own heart once, she finds she has no will to do it again.

She wakes the next morning still conflicted and miserable, believing she has no appetite until her breakfast is served in bed. The nurse is glad to see her eat so heartily, telling her that her health is well on its way to full restoration, that soon their wedding may take place. The nurse reports that she has never seen so diligent or tender a bridegroom; while Jane rested from her ordeal, he scarcely left her bedside, only when he had to.

The knot of anxiety in her stomach shrinks to a hard seed of tension as he comes to her, saying that he will escort her to the seaside, and he has made every imaginable preparation; a servant provides a cover for shade, a blanket for them to relax upon, a basket of prepared delicacies.

She has never seen anything like it. The water is a deep blue out to the horizon, blue-green as it laps closer, pale against the sand. Her heart rises in her at the sight, and she is spellbound. It is a wonder, and it is given to them alone.

"It is magnificent," he murmurs, his arm stealing about her waist. "I could find so little calm in my travels, but the sea—we are of the same nature. Bathe your feet in it; the sensation is like no other. But in a moment—you need to rest."

Her silence seems to make him pensive, but she fears what will happen if she breaks it. He ushers her to the blanket spread on the sand, and Jane trails her fingertips over it, drawing indistinct patterns.

"We will stay here until you are fit for travel, and then we will go anywhere you wish, anywhere at all," he says, his voice eagerly cajoling, promising her all he can imagine might persuade her. "I will buy you paints and canvases, anything you want, so you may capture it all. We will see all the beauty the world has to offer, and my soul will be fit to treasure it, with you by my side. You are my dearest sight, Janet. All you wish, all within my power, you will have."

She shakes her head, but when he takes her other hand, she turns and meets his gaze.

"I did not know you would do something so desperate, to leave in the night as you did—but perhaps you wished for me to prove my love."

She draws again from him again, turning to look fully into his face. "I cannot deny that I am grateful to you," she tells him. "I do not know how much farther I could have gone; my strength was spent when you found me. But nothing has changed, Mr. Rochester. We must part, for the sake of both our souls. You are bound to another."

"I am _indeed_ bound," he replies, his brow furrowing. "There is no more apt word. But you damn me for the entirety of my lifetime thanks to one youthful mistake. I damn myself more than you could ever condemn me for it—"

She reaches up, unable to resist, and touches his cheek. "No," she murmurs. "I told you before. I do not condemn you for your marriage."

"Not that one," he continues, when she does not. "You judge me a coward for keeping the truth from you, and to that charge, I have no defense.

"You wished to marry me once, though," he says, and strokes a loose strand of her braided hair from her cheek. "Have the circumstances changed so drastically?"

"You may just as well ask whether I wish to breathe underwater, or soar with the birds!" she says, shaking her head. "We cannot _be_ together, and to allow yourself to think otherwise—it makes you into the kind of man I hope, I _believe_ , you are not."

"And if Mason and his lackey had been a day later," he continues, gazing into her eyes, "you would have sworn to me with your lips what your heart swore in our every embrace. That you are mine; that your happiness is bound up in our joined lives. We will never rest if we are apart, Janet. We will never know happiness while separated. How can _happiness_ be resisted so? For years I believed I would never know or find it, that I would be granted no reprieve, that I would find no mate equal to my own soul, but I find her here before me. I would swear to love and cherish you, just as you would have sworn it in return. For the want of a few hours, you declare that our chance at the happiness denied me for so long must be cast away. As though you never loved me at all."

"Please!" she cries, standing. The sun is bright and full above them, blinding against the sand, warming her pale skin. Her shoes are clumsy in the sand and he catches up with her within a few steps, and the taste in her mouth is bitter. "You cannot change what is, and your insistence on this—this _charade_ , only twists the knife of your lie even more deeply. I would be your—your _mistress_." Her lips twist on the ugliness of the word. "You would tire of me as you have the rest. Let us part like this, Mr. Rochester. Let us part before this has become something ugly and wasted."

"The ugly waste would be _in_ our parting!" he declares, his hand closing about her arm, and unwillingly she turns to him again. "Now that your soul no longer sleeps, Jane, you cannot doubt what you feel—only the circumstance. Had she died while we were still in the West Indies—"

"But she did not." Jane's voice is low, but clear. "We are not free to love each other and to pursue it now bespeaks a weakness in character—"

"To deny it— _that_ betrayal is the weakness," he retorts.

"You would break a vow made before God so easily," she says, and the bitterness in her voice surprises even her.

At that, he actually takes a small step back, peering into her eyes. "So that is what you believe of me," he murmurs, his voice slow, deceptively calm.

She crosses her arms, nodding, looking down. "Your promises mean so little," she murmurs. "I am a plain girl, less than the Italian beauty who could hold your attention so brief a time. You will tire of me. You will see me for what I am, finally—and I am unwilling to be your salvation. Only God may redeem you, Mr. Rochester, and to be cast aside, having drunk the nectar of your words—I would fain snatch out my own heart."

For a long moment, he doesn't reply; she waits until she cannot resist it any more, then glances up at him. He is flushed, his temper high, and she steels herself so she won't shrink away from him. He must understand, but she is not at all sure she can make him understand. His heart is jealous, and beyond reasoning, especially now.

"If anyone," he says, his hands clenched to fists, "God included, can look upon that miserable beast now sharing my name and feel we are equally yoked—if you can believe that the only fit punishment, the only measure of joy I may ever have is in her hands? Then you leave me to the misery I nearly ended with a pistol. Oh, do not leave me to this slow agony, Jane. If you would snatch the peace of your love from me, do not leave me like this. Perhaps she is mine until death, but the woman I married bears little resemblance to the one haunting Thornfield, made ugly and brutish by her diseased mind.

"And you—Jane, my perfect rose. Do not leave me in this hell.

"Perhaps I deserved the torment of my marriage to Bertha, to punish me for making such a hasty, foolish decision—but that punishment has done its work, and I will beg you, love, if that's what you require. She is not the woman I married, nor am I the man she married. I have worked my seven years; I have paid, paid with interest. And your love is the treasure I would be denied."

"You ask me to contradict God's law."

"Yes," he replies, immediately. "Her insanity has killed any vestige of the woman I married, and I stand before you a widower who preserves the living grave of his first wife. My vows to her are not broken; they were spoken to a woman who did not exist, even then. But you, my love—I would speak the words with every bit of my will, and I would stay with you until my dying day, happily. If our union is blessed, all the better; I will have a pastor here this afternoon, if you wish. No interruptions this time. No secrets between us. Just the knowledge that you, if you walk away from me—you leave the other half of you; you take my better half with you.

"Jane..." He reaches for her again. "A mistress may sate the body, for a moment or two." Jane flushes, still studying his eyes. "But you are my counterpart, my true equal, and you alone can soothe my soul."

She has no response. He suggests soon after that they dip their toes into the water, and it laps cool to her ankles, the sand sucking at the soles of her feet, and despite herself she smiles. The tug in the current is so like the tug she feels toward him: impossible to ignore, unique and hard to forget.

When she wakes the next morning, she finds a sketchpad, pencils, paints, and canvases in parcels waiting for her. Her heart is still in turmoil, and the more strongly she _knows_ she must leave him behind, the less willing she feels. She tells herself that she can be strong enough to be a companion to him, without sharing the benefit of the bridal bed; she will keep her love hidden, letting him draw his strength from her presence. He will understand. Slowly, he will understand. Perhaps his wedding to Bertha was a mistake, but it is a marriage, and she cannot step between him and his wife.

_She is no wife, no wife at all. She attacks him; she tried to kill him. And yet he treats her well, shows her more tenderness than she would find in an asylum._

_But, at the asylum, she would expose him as a bigamist._

_How can I ever be happy with him, knowing that his vows can be so easily cast aside?_

She knows what she must do. She has known from the moment she woke up to find herself here. Once her strength is recovered, she will leave—but she doesn't have so much as a single jewel or shilling to support her. She imagines returning to Lowood and applying for her old position as a teacher there—but it was not wide enough to satisfy her soul _then_. Now, now that she has seen, could have been, so much?

_I am poor plain Jane Eyre_ , she reminds herself, finding the simplest, meanest gown in her laundered wardrobe, lacing it without a maid's help. _My reward is not here. To stay is to court ruin._

He rises when she comes to the breakfast-table; she sees his jaw clench as he recognizes her appearance, the steel of her spine. He heaves a soul-rending sigh. "And so we are back where we began, my angel?" he says, and she touches the back of her chair without pulling it out; he makes no move to do so himself and they gaze at each other.

How can she leave him now? And what fate could be worse than what she has already done? Perhaps she has refrained from succumbing to the weakness of her flesh, but her hidden love seems worse. She craves the sight of him like some rare delicacy, and her appetite reaches no end.

"I must leave," she says, and swallows, glancing down.

"The driver told me you had naught but twenty shillings," he replies, "and I know you took no salary of me on your departure. Whither shall you go this time, my sparrow? Shall you depend upon the kindness of some rogue to deliver you to the capital of debauchery that is Paris, and eke out your meager living sketching for your supper?"

A flush rises in her cheeks. Her gaze sinks to the empty plate set out for her, and she does not find it in her to respond.

"You truly wish to be parted from me. For ever."

"Yes." Her voice is scarce louder than a whisper, but it is firm. She cannot look into his eyes as she says it.

"Then give me this week," he says, and she hears him take a step toward her. "Seven days, that I may store up all the happiness I shall ever have."

"Edward," she whispers, closing her eyes. "Please..."

When she feels his fingertips against her wrist, she shudders. "So you tremble away from me in revulsion even now? I am the same man who has always loved you..."

She tips her chin up, forcing herself to take a step back, though the loss of his touch makes her ache. "We must be indifferent to each other, sir," she says. "We must..."

When the servant enters, Edward clears his throat, then reaches for her chair to pull it out. Their conversation over the meal is light, sparse, centered on the weather, and she can feel him straining at the interruption. Neither of them wish to discuss their situation until they are alone.

She cannot turn down the invitation to the seaside again, but this time an easel, canvas, and her paints accompany them. Her tortured spirit whispers that she might give him something to remember her by, a painting in her own hand to keep as a memory of what they could have been, but her mind is a jumble of fear and anxiety. She cannot give him what she needs, and to leave him with a canvas—a canvas she can't even bring herself to paint, seems a mean repayment.

"Will you give me my week, Jane?"

The sun is blinding against the canvas and she sighs in resignation, her stomach clenching just before she meets hie eyes again. "There is nothing to be gained in it for either of us," she tells him. "I cannot give you what you seek."

"You can; you refuse, from some antiquated sense of righteousness that leaves you colder than the marble of your heart," he replies, and stands. "Give me a week, that we may share with each other all that we might. I will not force you, Jane. My delicate rose. Give me seven days and then willingly return to the night, now that your eyes have been opened to the sun, that you may feel what I feel now.

"In a week, if you still wish it, I will give you your freedom. I will find a suitable position for you in whatever corner of the globe you name; I will provide you means to reach it, and I will do all I can to keep you safe. You need only write me and I will come to you; I will bear you here or wherever else you wish, and give you the life I always wished to find."

Jane shakes her head. "I cannot leave you with such temptation."

"So you must vanish into a cheerless night again, bereft of friends and safety? No. My love is not so bitter to wish you ill. I would have you safe and provided for—"

"In your own arms."

"Would you permit it," he nods. "Elsewhere, if only that will keep your heart from turning against my own."

"And I must give you a week of companionship in return, should I wish your help."

"The benefit of your conversation and friendship; no more, if you wish."

She hears what he has not said. Should she wish to renew the recent intimacy of their relationship, should she turn the key and loose the feelings she has locked deep inside her—

_My daughter, you must flee temptation._

But it is drowsy and sweet, and she ran—only to find herself with him again.

She is hardly aware of how it happens. She cannot find it in herself to refuse, and the almost painful joy she sees on his face in return is enough to melt her heart.

They take dinner together, then retire to the sitting-room. With the curtains parted, they gaze out onto the water, and she makes herself remember it, to hold in some secret part of her and recall without bitterness when she thinks of this, and all he is and will ever be to her.

"Jane."

In the weak moonlight, in the candlelight, alone with him, the intimacy of his voice as he murmurs her name is too much. She moves both hands to her lap and clenches them tight. She has promised him a week for her freedom, and she can withstand this temptation—she prays she can.

"In what part of you does love dwell?"

"In my heart, of course," she replies, turning to gaze at him, keeping her tone even. "In my mind as I perceive that which I love."

"And what part of me provokes that emotion, that quick fidelity? My coarse countenance, the square of my shoulders, the sinews of my hands?"

She presses her lips together, looking down. She cannot sense the drift of his thoughts, only that some snare awaits her.

"Do not scowl so, Jane. My question is honest."

"All of you," she murmurs.

"Were I to be made less, would you still love me so?"

"Of course. It would be easier—" She cuts herself off, glancing down again.

"Go on."

"I find myself praying that time will make this into a dream," she murmurs. "That the nightmare of my waking—but I cannot; we cannot make the truth other than what it is, and so my wishes must be cast away."

"But it is the truth I wish to show you," he says, and his voice has that troubling note again. "Were I to lose a finger, the use of my hand? A foot, the lobe of an ear? You have never cared for my face, but would some disfigurement dampen the flame of your love, my sweet?"

"Do you truly think me so shallow?"

"Answer me."

"No. It is your soul, your very essence that I love, Mr. Rochester—but do not make me speak of it."

"Then let us take the case of a man who loves a woman, who is loved by her in return. Were their love like ours, that love would not depend on physical appearance. It would be a meeting of the minds, a joining of souls."

"Yes." Her voice is almost imperceptible.

"Were your body broken and changed, my love would not dim in accordance," he says. "Because this, what we feel—this is the essence of truth, Jane. You cannot deny it, for denying it would be like denying your own breath or the spark of genius in you that guides you. Were we other than what we are, our love would be less. Céline, Giacinta, Clara—my ardor lived in the fantasy of what I desired, and when their true natures were revealed to me, my dream was gone, and I was left to a shadow of what I sought.

"Even that, Jane—even that stale, disgusting mockery was better than my marriage bed."

Jane stands, crossing to the window. Since she woke in her appointed bedroom, since those first quiet moments when she believed herself finally free, her every breath has been shadowed by the endless crash of the waves on the other side of the window. "You belittle it so—"

"You do not _see_. You do not wish to see; you condemn me—"

"I do not. I could not."

"But you still wish to leave."

Jane clasps her arms tight about her waist, as though to hold in what she almost dares not voice. "I never _wish_ to leave," she murmurs. "But our only hope is in parting for ever."

Edward releases another sigh, and she feels his hand against her arm, fingertips warm. "My hope lives, breathes, and dies with you," he murmurs. "You and you alone, Jane."

\--

They part only to sleep, and if those hours she spends awake in that narrow bed foretell the misery she will feel without him, she lacks all will to continue. Only a few days, only a few—but if she accepts his offer and his comfort, then the days will not end, and she will wake each morning to the temptation and her own weakness.

The canvas remains empty. She can paint with no fidelity what she sees before her, and all within her heart is ceaseless turmoil, panic and fear. She will be able to think more clearly once they are parted, but when the moment of crisis comes, she wonders if he will be able to release her; she wonders if she will even find the strength to leave.

"Mr. Rochester," she begins the next morning, her stomach clenching as she even considers her breakfast. "You say that I do not see. What I do understand is that you ignore the laws you agreed to follow."

"And that any vows I made to you would be similarly discarded. That the base, carnal attraction I felt for another would excuse my behavior—or so I apparently must believe."

She nods, watching him for a renewed surge of passion and anger, but this morning he seems calm.

"When I presented you that case yesterday," he says, and she studies him, her heart thrilling at the earnest, intelligent tone in his voice. He reasons with her as an equal, and she will miss that more than almost anything else. "You agreed that your—that our imaginary woman's love does not dwell in one particular part of her lover, but in her perception and interaction with him. That the connection between their minds and souls was the vital component."

She nods again. "No instance of physical deformity would weaken that love."

"Then a marriage vow is not made merely or only between bodies, but also between minds. Would you agree?"

She considers, but she cannot disagree; she nods again.

"Both are necessary?"

"Of course," she replies. "One without the other is senseless."

The smile that crosses his face at her agreement makes her stomach twist even as her heart beats a little harder. "And I would give you both, my love," he tells her. "A true marriage, as I have never known.

"You say that I am married, but it is in words alone. You say that marriage requires a meeting of both mind and body, that injury to the body would not invalidate such a bond. But I, in my foolish, callow youth, wed Bertha for her body, knowing little of her mind—and what little I knew proved false.

"Were I to die, leaving only my lifeless body, my marriage would end."

She hates the idea, but considers it anyway. "Of course. The spirit, the essential part of you, would be gone; you are more than an assortment of limbs and blood."

He stands; he is restless, and he paces like a caged thing, most of his breakfast untouched. "And I married naught _but_ the limbs and blood," he tells her, casting a fierce glance at her, almost daring her to disagree with him. "The essential part of her is rotten to the core; it poisons all she does, all she is; _she_ is poison. To me and all who must spend time with her.

"You cannot call her a wife in any but the name."

"But she retains the name— _your_ name," Jane declares, her voice almost as impassioned as his. "Were you to die, were _she_ to die, of course your marriage would end—but only that circumstance can part you. Do not accuse me with those fierce glares of yours; do not make me out to be the villain when all I did was love _you_ , sir."

"But I would call you villain," he replies. "Jane, the injury was done to me! You think me a scoundrel, irredeemable—but I was bound to that woman by a trick, a fraud, done to me by those who should have loved me best."

"As was I, very nearly!" she cries, raising her hands in a rapid gesture. "I was betrayed by he who claimed to have loved me best—and, Edward, compounding one lie, one sin, with another does not negate the first!"

"So you agree that my first marriage _was_ under false pretense."

She shakes her head wearily, helpless; she feels both faint and exhilarated all at once. "I agree to nothing," she replies. "You are to be pitied, sir, and a great injury _was_ done to you, but it cannot be fixed this way. Never this way."

"But this is the _only_ way." He strides toward her, her gaze locked on his tormented face; he clasps her hands in his, his face inches from hers. "Perhaps her body lives, but her mind, that spark which I truly married, unknowingly, blind—that is gone."

She wrenches away from him, shaking her head. "You cannot draw me in so," she replies. "Your vow was not to have her as your wife for as long as she retained her sweetness and vigor, and yet you cast her aside as your will deems her unworthy. In the eyes of God, she _is_ your wife. For as long as you both shall live."

"You cannot truly believe—"

She shakes her head again. "My belief, my emotions—they are of no consequence."

"They are everything, my love."

"Do not speak to me so," she says, her voice low and trembling; she dashes a tear from her lashes with a quick brush of her fingertips. "Your love is capricious, obeying only your whims, and I would rather not see your ardor wane."

"This is no ardor!" His eyes flash fire into hers; he wrenches her hands from her clasp, holding them in his own again, then grasps her shoulders, drawing her to him. "This is no whim or fancy, though it may soothe your troubled heart to lie about it so. It would be easier for you to leave me, if you thought my love fit to gasp its last breaths and soon follow, but I cannot grant you that solace. _You_ are my perfect mate, Jane. You alone. You chain me to a corpse; you fear me when I would show you such gentleness..."

The kisses they have shared burn traitorous and treasured in her heart now; when he bends and presses his lips to her blushing cheek, the corner of her own lips, she cries out softly, but finds no words. She cannot fight; soon she will not wish to; soon she will no longer look at the injury she does, the sin of allowing this...

He holds her tight and her palms press to his chest, but he easily possesses the strength to overpower her, and fighting him is beyond her strength. His lips press to hers and she closes her eyes, feeling the bristles of his mustache, breathing in the scent of him, soap and leather. Her fingers flex; his tongue traces the seam of her lips, and when she breathes again he claims entrance, and her fingertips curve against the fabric of his coat.

At the sound of a footfall in the outer passage she gasps, pulling back, her heart like a frantic caged throb. His response is only to the panic in her face, and he releases her slowly. Jane steps back, relieved for the chance to quiet her swirling thoughts, but she can find no peace in her.

He told her once that her love slept. It is unfurled in her, and she fears it—but, given life and breath, it exists regardless of her will or wish. When she gazes upon him now, she feels little beyond it, less and less with each passing day.

_Resist temptation._

_Seven days,_ she reminds herself; six, now. She does not think of the days beyond that, once she has begged and wrenched from him permission to depart, permission he is more than unlikely to give. She does not think of the days he will drag out the arrangements, still working to convince her that she need not leave yet, she need never leave his side.

He is resolute, but so is she.

She castigates herself. She tries not to look at him. But the prospect of their imminent parting has left her with the same impulse he felt: to store the precious moments they have stolen, away from the harsh judgement society might heap upon them. His infamy is unknown here, and likely to stay secret. When the maid saw Jane's flushed cheek and reddened lips that morning, her only response was a coy sympathetic smile.

She was so nearly a bride, and here, they would be permitted to hold the ceremony Mason's intrusion denied them. She doubts he has any fonder wish.

"So society's expectations sway you more than you would have admitted to me."

Jane is caught staring in his direction; she turns her gaze down to the infinite sand, marveling at the heat captured in the minuscule grains as she trails her fingertips over them. "My judgement of you is not swayed by what society would say."

"A pretty lie," he retorts.

"Have I shunned your presence here? Admitted you no audience?"

"I would fain see you attempt it," he replies, and she sees a sparkle of humor in his perpetually grave eyes. "My home, my sworn bride—no one here knows that your acceptance of my hand, my fortune and my name, was a vow so quickly broken."

"Based upon a lie," she replies immediately.

"So you allow me that a vow made under false pretense is forfeit."

Frustrated tears rise in her throat at the avid expression on his face. "It is not my place to contradict the laws of man and God."

"Not even when those laws are wrong. When they lack the foresight to consider all circumstance."

Jane shakes her head. "You grasp at straws, sir," she says. "Your wife repulses you and so you seek any fragile grounds to reject her; when you found me..."

She cannot bring herself to speak, and he takes a few moments to gather his own thoughts. "You are her opposite in every possible way," he says, his voice low and intent. "Your reason, intellect, chastity—your virtue and even that faith, which makes me gnash my teeth and rail, even that I adore. Oh, Jane, I know that my omission shook you to the foundation, but you are resilient. I would have told you—because in our hearts, in our very _souls_ , we are already joined, our happiness commingled. I knew so little of her, and most of my intelligence was false; you, my sweet one, I have passed many a pleasant hour alongside; I know your mind, your heart, as well as my own."

"If you truly knew my heart, sir..."

He touches her chin beneath with one crooked finger and she brings her gaze unwillingly to his face, a thrill sliding down her spine as she does. "I know that you love me," he murmurs, and when his gaze sinks to her lips, she feels them part reflexively in answer. "I know that you may think you are stone, but what you feel for me cannot be so easily dismissed or forgotten as you wish."

"I would never wish to forget it. I would never..." She breaks off, glancing away, but her gaze lands upon his lips.

"We may not," he replies. "We may never forget, Jane. What is between us can never be undone, forgotten, cast aside. Do you think such intensity of feeling, such perfect sympathy, could ever be duplicated? It cannot. I know; I have tried. I despaired of ever finding you. I will do all I can to keep you."

"Even against my will?" she murmurs, when his lips are nearly brushing against hers.

"Perhaps you wish to leave, but your desire for this—is greater," he replies, and his lips claim hers, his arms stealing about her. She knows she must resist, must rise above this temptation, but that death-knell rings in her head again, and this is one more memory she can keep. Though it may burn her in the recalling, his kisses have always been surpassing sweet.

"Edward," she whispers when he releases her. Her cheek burns; her only will is to draw closer to him, to surrender herself to another embrace. She forces herself to open her eyes; she forces herself to move away, relaxing only slightly. His arms remain about her, his gaze fixed on her face.

"When you have endured such misery and despair as I have—though I pray you never do, my love. The constraints society might place on our happiness seem cruel and mean, fit to be discarded. I leave it in God's hands to judge me."

"And you believe He will not, for the sin you wish to draw me into, for the corruption you beg of me?"

"I believe it no corruption at all; I believe it right," he replied. "The purity and goodness between us—"

"You value my purity and virtue, but you ask me this?"

"For I am left with no other choice! Jane," he cries, agonized, his grip tight about her.  "Can you truly believe we are not meant for this?"

"My beliefs are—"

"Inconsequential, so you say—when their direct consequence is my misery."

"You are bound, sir. You cannot be bound to another. To me."

"As it is God's will? Many men, holy and less so, had more than one wife. Hundreds, thousands, filled their palaces and harems. I desire the first true marriage of my life, and you deny it to me."

"Because I must!"

"Against your own heart?" When she rises, he releases her, but follows; she clings to her skirt, drawn to the water by the turmoil within she sees mirrored there. "Against your own desire? Who demands it? Show me the man who declares our love unholy, against nature."

She cries out again in frustration and anguish. "You turn all my words back on me again," she accuses him. "You will not be satisfied; speaking reason to you is profitless."

"I will follow you to where logic ends, and beyond," he promises. "To where you see that denying ourselves, mortifying our flesh to some imagined reward—it is no better than the torment Brocklehurst subjected you and those other poor girls to for so long. He taught you that only denial, slavish devotion, could save you; you told me that you rejected his brand of faith, and yet I see it blazing here before me now."

"I did reject his faith. Taking pleasure in misery is no pleasure at all. But when the alternative to misery is eternal damnation?"

"Then you see no other choice. What am I to you, Jane? A devil in pleasing shape, made to tease and tempt you to fathomless depths? Naught but a figment of forgotten desire? I am a _man_ , Janet. A man whose ardor and passion for you pales in the face of his love and devotion. A man whose heart beats in time with your own." He catches her hand in his, holding it to his heart again.

"You are relentless," she murmurs, searching his eyes. "Like Pilot with a bone."

"And you would be my Pilate?" he replies, a humorless smile touching his serious lips. "You would judge me and find me wanting, leave me to perish to assuage your own conscience. I _am_ relentless. And as certain as you are that the innocence of our love impugns an immortal, omnipotent Being who has known our every thought, every moment of our lives—do you not see, Jane? How the universe so carefully contrived to bring us together? From Lowood you answered the call for Adèle's governess; had you answered another notice instead, we would never have met. Had I not returned from the Continent to find you, bewitching creature, dreaming of a life beyond the reaches of Thornfield... had you not left your parcel on the coach, had you left Whitcross before I reached it..."

"The light," she whispers, thinking it is only in her head, but his eyes gleam in interest.

"The light?"

She nods slowly, unwilling to reveal it, but unable to keep it from him. "I had reached the end of my strength; I wished only for death, but a light appeared, small but strong, easily dismissed as my own fancy; weak with hunger and despair I followed it..."

"To me," he finishes, when she can only gaze at him. "Need you any clearer sign? Need you more? You wandered into the desert and I have brought you back, restored you to health. Perhaps your spirits war within you, but they are revived. Here we can be anyone we wish; here we are free and reborn, pure and innocent again. We can make ourselves a second Eden and wrap it around us."

"And it would be an illusion," she replies. "You would truly have me live in a dream; you would have me forget that I have seen your true character, that your capacity for falsehood is above your own reproach. You cannot turn your eyes inward and _see_."

"You _have_ seen my true character, Jane. You have never thought me handsome and I am sure you do not think so now. I thought to appeal to your sympathy, but you harden your heart to all. You take pleasure in my misery; you desire to see me bleed for you. I have not yet done all the penance you require, have I, love."

She shakes her head. She feels trapped, and she cannot find any way out, not a way to escape his perpetual arguments, not a way to leave his presence. She is bewildered, and without peace and the time to meditate upon what she must do—

But she has no doubt about what she must do. Just as she did in Thornfield, she knows—but the knowledge and the will, they are not the same. She must leave him. She must block her ears to his argument, guard her heart against the pull of his. She must sever the knotted string joining them. It is wrong to love him, while his wife lives.

_As it would be wrong to rejoice in her death._

_How can love be wrong? How can this be wrong?_

She tells him she feels weak and faint, and so they repair to the villa for tea. The maid serves it to them with no upbraiding or haughtiness in her aspect. Jane is made his equal by his treatment of her, his esteem of her, his love. She has long seen herself as insignificant to others, so long that she is surprised to be treated any other way; when she leaves him, she will lose that esteem. If she is able to find another friend, another confidant...

She found none at Thornfield, and she is beginning to believe what he says. She will never find anyone who understands her as he does. She longs for a companion who speaks to her with the same sympathy that Miss Temple and Helen once did, but they are both lost to her now. She wishes to pour out her heart, her weakness, her doubts and fears; without him, parted from him, she knows she will fall into that same despair, that separating herself from the light and warmth of his embrace and love means walking willingly into the dark, greeting death with trembling open arms.

_It would be a fate worse than death, to love me?_

Oh, even now—he says he knows her heart, but she knows his too well, far too well to willingly separate herself from it.

Her journal, witness to much of her mortification and tears during her stay at Thornfield, was in the parcel she inadvertently left on the carriage; its contents were returned to her in the villa. That night, listening to the perpetual hush of the waves against the shore, beating, relentless, she feels only an echo of her own indecision. He will wear at her like the waves. The sand is delicate seashells, ground to fine powder, a monument to those forgotten, once-brilliant creatures. His desire will destroy her, and she will have no self-respect, no esteem for herself, if she gives in.

_Never! Oh, never..._

In the moonlight, a lit candle at her bedside, she draws her journal to her from the small table, but she can neither bring herself to read it again, nor add to it. Her struggle is too terrible to be recorded, when it should be no struggle at all. Her course and path are clear. Only her frailty block it now. Her frailty and her destitution, and her mortified pride.

_How can our love be wrong when a single fact is all that stands between us and happiness, and peace? He is a good, honorable man—badly hurt, sickened in his soul, yes, but his heart is good, his compassion intact. A good husband—save that he is not free to be one to anyone else. Passionate, stubborn, imperious—with such intelligence, and sometimes, such tenderness._

She falls to a shallow uneasy sleep; whenever she closes her eyes, tears slip from beneath her lids, dampening the pillow beneath her head. She is held fast, unable to escape, unable to see a path that will not hurt her.

She dreams of Thornfield, but she dreamt often of Thornfield; it is not strange to find herself walking its halls again. The house is shrouded in white and all the servants are there, and Adèle in her pretty party frock, skirt spread as she performs a precise curtsy. Jane carried an infant in another dream, sobbing pitifully; the infant she finds herself carrying is small, but silent, its eyes closed as it sleeps. She lays a hand against its chest, but feels it breathe and is reassured.

At the smell of smoke all the servants and those who live in the house go out into the garden; there they find Mr. Rochester, dressed in the same suit as he was on his interrupted wedding-day. A long banquet table is set with a wedding feast, and Jane looks down to see that she is dressed in plain grey muslin, the child still in her arms—and she feels a flower garland atop her head.

The smell of smoke does not provoke her in the dream. The people gathered around her do not care. Jane sees Blanche Ingram, her fine features arranged in a petulant scowl, arrayed in a fine dark-green gown. She sees a group of three, two women and a man, but their faces are hidden from her. She even sees Mason, and only then does her heart beat harder—but when the pastor approaches, his own countenance solemn, Mason fades into the crowd and is soon forgotten.

There is no wedding; there is no exchange of vows. They sit down to the feast and Jane finds that she wears a plain gold band she doesn't remember, but she does not question it. The smell of smoke becomes more pronounced. They should leave, but they do not; after the feast, Edward goes inside; when he returns, a few minutes later, Jane sees a large, tall black-robed figure striding into the darkness beyond Thornfield. Soon the figure is gone.

Jane wakes with the smell of smoke dissipating. The mornings are so warm that no fire needs be lain in her room, and beyond the window is white, the hushed pulse of the waves like the beating of her own heart.

Her maid enters anyway, and Jane pushes herself up, listening as she is told in French that a parcel has arrived for her, apparently courtesy her bridegroom. The contents are mysterious to Jane, until she translates what the maid is saying: a bathing outfit, meant for her to wear in the water.

"Have you ever learned to swim, Jane?"

He waits for her in the dining-room; by his looks she can tell he waits for some response to his gift, that he wishes it to please her. The bathing-outfit is a plain garment, quite modest, but she is still rather discomfited at the idea of swimming.

"No, sir."

"Today is a marvelous day for it. The outfit is suitable? I refrained from having it decked in jewels and ribbons, so as not to provoke your wrath."

_Sackcloth and ashes_ , she thinks, but she does not know why. "So you do occasionally consider my feelings."

Her tone is light, but not light enough; he places his toast upon his plate and takes her hand. "They are _all_ I consider, Jane. I hold your future happiness in the palm of my hand; I would give it to you freely, to my last drop of blood and last breath, if only you would take it; I would feel it a hundredfold in return. A smile, a kind word from your lips—a kiss given freely, as you did give me, once upon a time. In my memories dwell all my hopes and wishes for what we were and what we can be again, if only you could see."

Remembering that time just provokes an ache in her chest; her love was based on a lie, and dwelling on it poisons the sweetness.

She consents to put on the outfit after their midday meal, and he is similarly attired as they make their way down to the water. He has found a more secluded, shallow cove, and has decided that a slow introduction would be appropriate. The beach has been absent all human occupancy save theirs during their every visit. She has spotted distant miniature figures, groups on holiday, always at a considerable remove, so far away they hardly seem real.

She remembers the stories they told Adèle, about living on the moon together; his villa does not quite feel so distant as the moon, but very nearly. He is the last connection to who she was, before the veil was ripped away; if she is to build her own life, it will have to be without him.

They wade into the water until it splashes her calves, soaking the fabric, and despite the low state of her spirits, the sensation is still marvelous and strange. He keeps his hand clasped to hers, and when he suggests that they sit down in the water, she hardly knows what to do.

The swimming lessons are slow. That day, when she inadvertently gulps in a mouthful of seawater, it stings her nose and throat and she sputters and cries out in alarm, gasping in great breaths and trembling faintly until she is recovered. He assures her that she will be essentially unharmed, and she swears she will not enter the water again—but her curiosity wins, and soon she wades back in again.

The second day of their lessons, he asks her to trust him, then wades out with her past the insistent waves, until the water is up to her shoulders and her toes do not find the sand. He teaches her to float on her back, supporting her until she relaxes enough to do it herself; she is terrified, clinging to his hand, her grip like iron, and when the water surges beneath her she wants to wrap herself around him and hold on to keep herself aloft. He is patient, though, and she thinks that maybe he feels the way she does, glad to be close without the anxiety of their perpetual debate, glad to focus on something other than the insuperable obstacle between them.

When she trusts that the water will not close over her head and pull her down, that her serenity allows her to float, he links his index finger and thumb to cage her wrist but otherwise does not touch her, and she gazes up at the sky overhead, the sunlight warm on her cheeks, the wind like a kiss. If she could save the way she felt right now...

But it will remain locked in her memory alone.

He demonstrates an easy stroke she can use while floating on her back, and when she is tired but exhilarated with pleasure and a pure, innocent triumph of accomplishment, they begin to make their way back to shore. Wet tendrils of her once neatly-braided hair have escaped and are lain against her neck and cheek; Edward reaches for one, pushing it back.

She feels such tenderness for him. Despite herself, she finds that she is swayed by his persistence, his passion, his fervent belief that what he has told her is true—so much that she wants to believe it.

He urges her to try to understand his naïveté, his pain, and she has tried to imagine it: an introduction to a handsome, charming man who can assure her future comfort and safety, the union advanced by all the people she trusts, and those who know it is unwise, unequal. She tries to imagine what he would have felt, his father and brother complicit in his ruin, shackled thanks to a hasty, ill-conceived marriage to a raving beast.

She tries to imagine it as he would have felt it, but she only feels pity and sympathy. His world is so far outside and above her own that she understands it little, and the only consolation she feels at knowing their connection is broken is that she will never need learn how to move in the circles of his society.

He promised her isolation, innocence; their life here is comfortable, and when she desires a widened sphere, he would happily agree. She would want more; she will...

She _cannot_.

She turns to look at him, his hand still lingering on her neck; he leans down, and his lips are salty from the touch of the water, and she rests her palm on his shoulder as he clasps her in his arms. Her heart flutters, caged and desperate, but it feels like coming awake; every sensation is more intense in his arms. His tongue traces her lips and she shudders as it slips into her mouth, and she is far too aware of how indecent her attire is and how this will look, should a maid observe them.

But they have no chaperone and to them he is her bridegroom, and for a second she feels how very alone she is and would be without him. It feels as though she traded her heart for his, and only his can keep her alive; separation from him would mean certain despair, unendurable agony.

_But I must._

He seems to sense her renewed resolve; she drops her chin but she cannot find it in her to struggle and free herself from his arms. She has promised him this span of days, and she can never imagine that he would cast her out of his presence and the warmth of his love.

The prospect has never seemed easy. It feels insurmountable now.

Their evening meal is quiet. A new dress has appeared in her wardrobe; she sees a small intricate box beside her wineglass, but she hasn't the heart to open it: she dreads its contents and the fury she is sure to provoke afterward. She feels his gaze on her, always.

She can speak it with her lips, but her limbs no longer possess the will to carry it out. She can tell him that their separation is the only choice, but she is beginning to slowly understand that the interval has closed. She was shaken, all of her shocked and numb, and her resolve had been strong when she walked away from Thornfield. She cannot gain the will to leave him again while they are together this way, spending most of their waking moments together, and she is learning who he _is_ —and finding it beyond her strength to condemn him or think him an unfeeling monster. He is not. This would be easier if she could believe that falsehood.

He is a man and he loves her, just as he swore he did, and to punish him for his mistake—

_But his mistake is a vow made before God!_

She grows more miserable as her thoughts turn and twist in her, as she tries but cannot bring herself to agree with his tortured logic. Stripped away from all the ornamentation his speeches heap upon them, the facts remain the same. He is married and his wife yet lives; to join with him would contradict all she knows and understands of law.

_And what is law, in the face of this?_ She hears it in his voice; her passion speaks in his low forceful tones now. Her eyes are opened; she sees what pain she will cause, in her departure.

_He knew his soul was not free. This injury is done by his own hand. He is not free to love._

_And yet he does. And yet I do._ The fallen rain, drawn in by the earth, cannot be reverted back to the clouds. The words have been spoken. But she cannot delude herself this way.

She opens the box; she senses and knows the act as a failure of her self-control, but it is a small one, it is just a small gift—

She sees inside a band of gold, a circlet of small diamonds on it.

"I cannot—"

"You cannot, you cannot—and yet you do," he tells her, his hand stealing close to hers. "Our love is wrong, is it not? The passion you feel toward me, the perfect sympathy of our true natures, the ease between us—it is somehow wrong. I offer you the world and you reject it for privation and death, and it is _right_?" His voice was calm; now it is rising. "You may doubt all else, but know this. You are the end of my journey, better than all I sought, and if you leave, it is better that your hand bear the weapon that should rend my heart. My last breath will be the scent of your perfume; the last touch I will know will be yours. No matter where you go or what you do, one man in this entire world will love you, will be faithful to you and you alone.

"May you look on that ring and remember that. May you try to find happiness anywhere else, but know that my happiness lives, breathes, and dies with you."

"We cannot," she murmurs, but her voice sounds feeble even to her own ears. Her pulse, her breath—she seems overmastered, complicit in her own fall.

"We cannot? We can do nothing else," he tells her. "The ring is a sign of my fidelity, my constancy. Especially for you, my angel. Your refusal would change nothing.

"You believed I could so easily forget you. I could more easily forget my right arm."

He reaches for the box, and though she moves back a little, her gaze rising to his face, she cannot move her hand from his grasp. It is a wedding-ring in all but name; their union would be a marriage in all but name.

_Mistress._ The word makes her soul shrink, but is the truth.

He places it in her palm, not on her finger, and she is grateful for that small concession. "I will do ask we agreed. At the end of our time together, I will provide for your future apart from me, and take the smallest consolation in knowing that wherever you are, you are safe, though possibly as miserable as I—if that is what you desire. But here, my sweet, you may yet be my bride, unblemished. We may live together as we have always desired."

Jane thinks of it again, unbidden: Bertha's savage face and reddened bloodshot eyes bathed in cold moonlight, the enraged snarl and crease of her brow, Jane's elaborate wedding-veil torn in two on the floor. A message to her, and a warning. As earnestly as he might claim that his wife is mad, lost for ever, as earnestly as he might believe it—Bertha _knows_ ; she lives. To claim her convenient living death is to contradict all the laws of nature, and such a lie does disservice to his reason, constant in so many other things.

Would that she could believe it, too. Would that she could wrap herself in the cloak of his belief and denial.

_Vampyre_. She thought it then, and it returns now. The rage, the brutal wound in Mason's neck, the thin black terror of that night spent waiting for the doctor and—

Jane shakes her head, her heart in her throat again, fighting against it even as her fancy overtakes her. The living death, the wound in the throat, the blood, the _thrall_ —

The red. How could Edward be seduced by such a creature, induced to damn himself, save by some supernatural force...

Jane pushes herself back from the table and he rises with her; she hears him asking what has affected her so, but she cannot answer. He will fix on any gap he finds in her armor, widening it until she has no defense against him, none at all, until his fingertips encounter bare flesh and the pulse of her heart...

She wishes to believe and so she finds a way to do so. She craves his innocence and so she returns it to him again. He keeps Bertha close, always and ever returning to her; Jane's mind conjures up the image of herself in her bridal raiment, languishing in Edward's arms as he presents her to the spectre who has kept him chained in torment, unable to die, unable to part.

_This is the true sacrifice of your heart. This is your lot: to immolate yourself before his damnation can overtake you, or to cast yourself into the deceptive pleasure of his arms._

She tells him her head is aching and she is weak; he immediately insists upon a soothing concoction and for her to retire to bed. She hardly knows where she is, or what to do; when her soul cries out for answer, she knows that her fancy is only a sign. Her sacrifice would be only spiritual, should she give in to him, but his soul can be knit to only one. Jane cannot be the one.

Even so, she clasps the ring in her palm as she sleeps, and her dreams are dark and crimson.

\--

When she rises the next morning, she feels almost feverish, but calm. She wakes convinced of two facts: that as long as Edward knows where she is, she will never truly be free from this temptation—and that he has given her the means to vanish for ever. The ring has pressed a circle of deep pink in the center of her palm, she clenched it so tight as she slept.

She will be miserable, but she will be free.

She dresses herself and swiftly plaits her hair; her aspect is pale, her eyes alight, and she tells herself she is making the correct choice, even as her heart sinks under the weight of her decision. She imagines him finding the ring in some shop-window and knowing she has rejected him, and steels herself against it; no matter how strongly he claims it, he _will_ forget her. He will replace her with another, another. He will find another girl he can treat as his equal, deceive into a false marriage...

She gives a swift jerk of her head, curtailing those thoughts. She must use her strength while she can. Tonight, while he is less likely to suspect or be on his guard, she will steal away and begin her life without him.

Her bathing outfit has been rinsed and dried, and is ready for her to don for another swimming lesson, but that intimacy would be a mistake, she knows. She has no idea how she will deceive him this way; it seems a cruel act, but it is her only defense.

_Reason does not shrink from those who would challenge it; reason which cannot stand is no reason at all._

But her heart holds sway, her traitorous heart, and reason is but a blind snare.

Edward seems to be waiting for her, and his gentle inquiries about her health, whether her nerves were overstrained by their swimming lessons, if she feels well enough to leave her bed for the day, are all earnest. She gives him a smile, assuring him that she is still a bit unsteady but well recovered, absolving him of any involvement, and his relief touches her heart.

She cannot leave, and yet she must. She cannot love another, and yet the only love she has found is denied her.

_And for what?_

"I do not wish to strain you again. Perhaps we should stay indoors today. Have you yet found an opportunity to use your paints?"

She is relieved at the suggestion; she can ask for solitude, and take some time to puzzle through her nascent plans.

But he stays with her. Sometimes he tries a book; sometimes he gazes at her until she senses it and turns to him, shaking her head but unable to stifle her smile. She tells him she is self-conscious when he gazes at the work in progress; she has set herself to painting the sea, the landscape in front of her, the happiest and most despondent she will ever be. She has little experience with the type, though. She is more skilled at the pale wash of watercolors, the insubstantial images created by their use; he calls them flimsy but she sees them as nearly realized, suiting their genesis.

After their midday meal he calls for his own canvas, declaring that he will try his hand as well; he teases her for her raised eyebrow, accusing her of little faith. He asks her to demonstrate her skill as a teacher and instruct him, her pupil.

She did not doubt her love for him, and she doesn't now, but it feels all the stronger over the course of that afternoon. He scowls and fumes when the brush will not obey him, and she realizes only belatedly that his requests for her demonstrations are an excuse to be close to her. She accidentally rubs a bit of paint on her forehead, and he declares that they shall match, brushing a bit of paint on himself. He ends up chasing her with a paintbrush, and she collapses into helpless giggles as he wraps his arms about her and pulls her onto the couch. Smudges of paint mark his cheeks and forehead, and his hair, trimmed for their wedding-day so brief a span of days before, is unruly, which matches his personality far better. When he leans down to kiss her, her recent laughter fades into the warmth of love, and for a moment she allows herself to experience it without doubting or questioning it, without upbraiding herself for the feeling. It is sweet and good, and her heart rises as he slips his tongue into her mouth, stroking it against hers, one hand stroking down the curve of her side and hip.

He is the only man she has ever kissed, the only one she has ever loved—the only man she thinks she ever will. She remains still, unsure of what to do or how he wishes her to respond or behave; when she first tentatively moves her tongue against his in kind, a thrill goes down her spine, a jolt of awareness hot against the join of her thighs. He presses her against the back of the couch, and he strokes his hand against her thigh and knee, his other hand stroking her neck and jaw.

She is weak when she finally breaks the kiss; her lashes are low, her lids heavy, and she feels almost languid. "Edward," she whispers.

"Jane," he murmurs, and kisses her again. "How often I wished to treat you so, and feel you soft and pliant in my arms..."

How often she wished for it too, but that reminder makes her remember her place and the perilous state she is in. His lips brush her neck and she moves away from him, panting softly, looking into his paint-spattered face.

"And so you provoke me again, sprite," he murmurs, and even that reminder of the playfulness between them makes her ache. She will leave him again. She reminds herself that what she desires most can never be hers, that clasping him in her hand will leave him insubstantial as sand flowing between her fingers. His fidelity is a vow, not a reality; it is an earnest promise, but one he cannot help but break.

She will treasure every second of the time she spent with him, but she has to leave him while it is still sweet, before she has compromised herself and him. Maybe he is a temptation for her, but so is she for him; she can believe, however doubtfully, that he will live a sinless life without her. They can do naught but hurt each other.

After their evening meal, she suggests they retire to the large common room so she can play the pianoforte for him—another custom of their courtship, another painful memory to make, but one which will hopefully keep his hands occupied with something other than her. Just as she knew he would, after she has played half a song, he gestures for her to move aside and takes over. She asks for a song, and he delights in the chance to sing for her. Just before he sits down, the last servant comes to ask if she can retire for the evening, and he gives his blessing.

Jane takes a seat near the instrument and gazes at him, his face in the candlelight as he positions his fingers on the keys, and even as she tries to lock it into her memory, she dreads their parting. The idea that she will never look upon him again, never feel the warmth of his skin or his kiss, never be his bride. Even once they are free to marry, they will be strangers to each other; she will no longer be young, no longer the Jane Eyre he knew and loved, and this is the last night she can spend in his company. She has already tarried too long.

He would lay the world at her feet, all she has ever wanted.

When it hurts too much to look at him, until she is full to the brim with love and dread, caught fast between the desire of her heart and the command of her brain—she turns and gazes through the window, onto the shore. From this moment on the sea will remind her of him, of this. She feels as though she has been starving, a feast set before her, but she fears the first bite will be poison even as she reaches for her fork and considers. She feels as though she is numb and freezing, toes and fingers blue, her palm against a golden window, looking in at a glowing hearth—the door locked but the key in her pocket, and the floor within likely to crumble beneath her feet should she take a single step inside. She cannot have the joy she seeks; she was a fool for ever believing she could.

Distantly she realizes that he has stopped singing; distantly she realizes that his playing has softened, then faded into the soft hiss of lamplight and the hitches in her breathing as she stifles her tears. She bows her head, trying to regain some modicum of her control, but she knows he is aware of her distress.

He murmurs her name, and she is too sick at heart to face him. She feels his palm against the thin fabric of her summerweight dress, warm between her shoulder blades. He offers his handkerchief, and she pauses for a moment before she takes it and wipes her wet cheeks. It is still clenched in her fist when she turns to face him.

"Tell me you are overtired," he murmurs. "Tell me you are sick with fever—anything to leave me blameless for the devastation on your pale face, my love. I never wished to hurt you so. Only to give your heart the time to wear down that indomitable will.

"Oh, I could chain you, break you, possess you so easily—and in the taking, I would lose you, the essence of you, that which I most treasure and desire. You are more than this fragile body, and I might beg and plead, but all I would ever have of you is your body, unless you wished otherwise."

Tears flood her eyes again. "You have all of me—all of me, down to the smallest part! Grind me to powder and I would still love you, I would still live in your eyes and respond to your every word. My heart and all that I truly am is yours—but we cannot—"

"Damnation!" he roars, his arms opening, rage and passion alight in his eyes. "We love each other, Jane! I am entranced and bound by you, and you to me! Show me what stands between us: what in this room, in this place, serves to keep us apart!"

She stands, blinking a pair of tears down her cheeks, and feels them soak the high collar of her dress. "Even if you have forgotten your vow, I cannot and I will not."

"Vows, oh vows! _Words_ , Jane! Pale shadows compared to what I _feel_." He grasps her hand, and she gasps as he draws her to the largest lamp in the room, then gazes straight into her eyes, a challenge in his face. "Look into my eyes, Jane. Your agonies are mirrored there, but rendered all the more helpless because my happiness is in your hands alone. You have decided I shall be wretched and miserable for the remainder of my days, for the accident of a faithless marriage. _She_ has broken every vow she made under heaven and yet _I_ am left bound! I believed you a sensible, feeling creature, who understood my soul—"

Her heart falters, but she rallies. "As did I! But your lie was a betrayal."

"And that betrayal, however slight, has cost me all my joy. Snatched from me at the last second. I was wrong to lie to you. But we are not wrong in this."

"Our only hope is in parting, in dashing this bitter cup from our lips—"

"But I would drink it all," he tells her, his eyes blazing. "I have drunk it all. Every night for _ten damned years_ and more, I have and now I am sick; now I see my angel before me and she takes her forgiveness, her sympathy and understanding from me—"

Jane cries out, jerking away from him, taking a few faltering steps but unsure where to go. She feels herself slipping. She has held tight to her conviction, but her fingers are opening.

"Be my bride," he says, his voice low and strong, and despite herself, her heart thrills as she gazes up into his eyes again. "We can have everything we wish, my love. Be my bride, the true bride of my heart and soul. I will pour out on you all the love and joy of my heart; you will travel through life by my side, and every morning will be more blessed because it will be spent with you. Tell me what you need and if it is within my power, it will be done."

"You cannot change the past."

"The past brought me to you. Our lives have brought us to this moment, Jane. I am the only man who will ever love you this way, and your touch is the only one I burn for."

She looks away, her color high, her heart racing. She feels herself on a precipice, standing at the cusp; her happiness and her damnation are cupped in her palms and her desire is a palpable ache within her.

"You would have promised to be my constant companion, the delight of my heart and my cherished one for ever. Speak it now and it will be done. Speak it now and you need never feel loneliness or despair again. Give me your heart, Jane, and I will join it with mine."

She has struggled; she is spent. She has wrestled with her reason until daybreak and neither has overcome the other. Her heart cares not; her heart sees its counterpart in him and will not but weep tears of blood at their parting.

"Yes," she breathes, and the bolt of terrible joy is almost enough to make her swoon. "I will be yours, as I have always been."

He draws her tight to his arms, up so she cannot feel the floor beneath her feet; he claims a hard passionate kiss, then another, and his laughter provokes her own. She runs her fingers through his hair, her body tight to his, no space between, no air, no light—just him, and a dawning to eclipse the endless night. "Jane," he murmurs, his words muffled as he breathes them against her skin. "My angel, my cherished one, my soul."

\--

The ceremony is in French. The gown she had worn so briefly on their first wedding-day is carefully laced about her again, her veil pinned neatly to her hair. Jane cannot meet her own eyes in the mirror, too afraid to be damned by her joy and condemned in her heart by her own desire, and the maid does not ask as Sophie did.

The church holds no strangers, just two servants to witness, but Jane feels the same impatience he did the first wedding-day: a terror that the church door will creak open, that lightning will strike just as it did the chestnut tree, that fate will conspire again to keep them parted. The creak of a floorboard sets her heart thundering; his palm is clammy against her clammy palm. She hears the words in French and holds her breath, her soul crying out.

"I require and charge you both—as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed—that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful."

_If it is not to be,_ she thinks, _show it now; if this cup is to be dashed from my lips again, if my lot is to wander this earth friendless and joyless until the day of judgement, let there be a sign that I might escape my damnation._

But the day, dawned bright and pretty, is unbroken by a sudden storm or peal of thunder; the church doors remain closed; the minister continues, and she speaks the words she had begun to believe she never would, responding to the minister's question with a low, clear assent, that she will honor, cherish and obey her lord for as long as they both shall live.

They are declared man and wife, and the earth does not split beneath their feet; her face, pale and wan throughout the ceremony, begins to gain some color as they sign their names. She was his in all but vow; now her vows match her heart, and she cannot feel anything but joy. The diamond ring is fitted on her slender finger and he is her husband.

Neither of them had any appetite for breakfast, and when they return to the villa, a table is lain and the house is decorated with fragile white blooms. When she woke the world was white and unstained.

It is done, and her heart cannot regret it.

Due to the haste of the ceremony, he tells her they will leave in the morning for their honeymoon—but it will be the rest of their lives. She will see Rome, Naples, Paris; Florence, Venice, Vienna, and all she has ever desired to see. Should she wish it, they will brave the passage and visit the Americas, the Indies. He has no desire to see Jamaica again, and she cannot contradict him in it, nor does she wish to. Rome is their first destination, and from there, the world will be a glittering landscape spread before them, full of new experiences, new joys, new scenes and faces, and he will share it all with her.

Mrs. Rochester. His child-bride, and the second of that name.

She tries to tell herself that one day he will tire of her, and perhaps the whitewashed villa on the shores of the sea will become her home, that he will lock her away and find another—but she cannot believe it, not when she sees the radiant joy on his face, made fragile by his doubt that he could be so blessed or lucky.

It is the sixth day since she opened her eyes to find herself in his care, and she will spend the remainder of her days by his side. She need never leave him again. She will draw her faith from the knowledge that she was reunited with him, when so easily she could have eluded him after she fled Thornfield; he took such tender care of her, proving himself the man she has always believed him to be, and her love, already infinite and fathomless, has only grown.

The servants share in their wedding-day meal, and after it is over, Jane retires to her room to take off her white gown. Every glimpse she has caught of her own reflection seems strange, ethereal, as though she truly is the fairy he sometimes declares her to be. The color is high in her cheeks, and her eyes shine. She had been feverish and fainting, pale and wan, stymied and railing at herself. Now she is at peace, more content than she has felt in a long time.

She _belongs_ to someone. It has been so long since she has belonged to someone. She is not to pass into the cold world alone, and if they are so blessed, God will allow them children.

When she touches the veil, her hand falters. No matter what she believes or what he believes, whether they have chosen together to defy society's laws and all she has ever taught she must obey for their own pleasure, they will spend the rest of their lives fearing the scrape of a sole, a raised voice, an accusation. Mason's words can break the bond made between them. Mason's words can turn him into a bigamist, can turn her into a mistress in all but name.

No matter what, she can never _forget_. She will carry the knowledge with her for the rest of her life. His wife yet lives; she has usurped Bertha's place, and Bertha's still-beating heart declares the band around her finger a farce, the promises they made worthless.

Jane gazes into the reflection of her own face in the glass, forcing herself not to shrink back from the image.

_Look upon yourself, who you are and what you have become, and know that you could have been otherwise. You have chosen him when he was not free to be chosen. You are lost._

But she remembers his words as well. The bitter cup at her lips is turned sweet. She may make her peace with her choice; today she may mourn for Bertha and what she lost, and perhaps it will take longer for Jane to find her own serenity with it. But she will. If the alternative is losing the man she loves, she will find a way to make her peace with it.

Once she is attired in another dress, this one a pale grey-green trimmed in plain lace, Jane makes herself another promise. She gave him this victory because she could do nothing else, but she will not let him change her. He spoke once of pouring his family's jewels onto her, bedecking her in the finest fabrics and patterns he can find, setting her up on a pedestal to be worshiped—but she would much rather be married to the man who chased her around the sitting-room with a paintbrush, who began teaching her how to swim, who argued with her as an _equal_. Who valued her mind and her will and her wishes, who rescued her and helped her and loved her.

_Look upon yourself and see the person who lived this span of days for this one, and all the rest to follow. I cannot believe that we were brought together merely to part; I cannot let a single mistake, a vow based on a lie, a base incompatibility destroy this. I will take the sweetness offered; I will drink it all, that it may sustain me if I am left with only its memory._

When Jane returns to him, he has a new letter in his hand, one she does not remember. Two other letters are lain on the table, and she glances at them, but the expression on his face arrests her, holding her full attention. When he finishes his perusal, he releases a soul-deep sigh, rendered otherwise speechless. The letter, made out in a neat hand Jane recognizes, falls to the table top.

She cannot read his expression, but she fears it, as the delayed stroke of lightning meant to part them. "Edward?" she murmurs. "Pray, tell me."

He shakes his head, and she fears he is in shock; he pushes the open letter toward her, and she takes it in hand, tilting it toward the undraped window to read it more easily.

Mrs. Fairfax hastens through the written salutations, and even though she is reduced to words scrawled on a page, Jane can sense her agitation. She writes that she is sorry to deliver this news, but she wrote as soon as she could.

The dismissed servants were gone, the house reduced to its skeleton staff, and all of them aware of the attic's occupant. A day passed without incident, but their vigilance did not abate; Grace Poole was given time to rest between her shifts, the key kept secure.

They do not know, even now, where Bertha located the candle.

Two days after Rochester departed with Jane for the French villa, Bertha managed to set the attic on fire. The smoke was detected soon after, and in the ensuing chaos, Bertha managed to escape her keepers and gain access to the roof. Once Grace realized her absence, she began to search—and only a boy down in the courtyard helping carry water to the house had noticed the figure on the roof, swaying in the moonlight.

Grace had gone to the roof to cajole her charge back inside, but Bertha had been beyond reason. Grace had very nearly been close enough to catch her wrist and thus compel her to go back inside, but she had not been close enough to prevent the fall—

Jane pales as she reads the words, the apologies, the assurances that all had been done. Bertha had fallen to her death. The damage had been limited to the attic, to the room that would no longer hold an occupant.

Bertha is dead. She has been dead for almost the entire time Jane has been here with Edward. They need never be afraid of condemnation or accusation. He is free, and now he is hers.

She glances up from the letter and into Edward's eyes, her own filling with tears. She grieves—it is but a drop of water in the ocean of her joy, but it is there. She never wished Bertha dead, and she grieves for it now—but it feels as though a weight more infinite than she had ever imagined is lifted from her chest, all her tears earned and repaid.

Despite herself, she is free.

He pulls her into his arms and they hold each other tight as they can, his lips against her neck as he clings to her.

"My bride, my one and only bride," he whispers, and she shivers in reply.


End file.
